


Guilt

by Mohini



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alcohol, Big Brother Dean, Chick-Flick Moments, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-29
Updated: 2014-06-29
Packaged: 2018-02-06 17:21:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1866093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mohini/pseuds/Mohini
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean's always thought he knew all of Sammy's scars. Turns out, there might have been a few he missed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Guilt

Sam’s been holed up in the bathroom for the better part of the afternoon. He’s refused to let Dean in, being enough of a stubborn brat to turn the lock. Dean’s been checking on him every few minutes, peeking through the generous crack between the floor and the bottom of the door in the current rat trap of a motel room. It obvious the kid’s sick, but what Dean can’t figure out is why in the world he won’t let him take care of him. 

From the moment their mother died in the flames, Dean has been the one to nurse Sam through all of childhood’s ills. He’s bandaged the scrapes, iced down the bruises, and coaxed Gatorade and saltine crackers into his little brother through a dozen different illnesses. Now, Sam’s hunched over the toilet and he won’t let Dean near him. When the sound of retching comes through the door yet again, Dean decides he’s had quite enough.

“Sammy! I’m coming in whether you like it or not, man,” Dean yells through the door. A moment later he’s threading a pick into the flimsy doorknob, releasing the latch and stepping into the room. Sam’s still got his head halfway in the toilet, his body convulsing with dry heaves. 

“Aw shit, Sammy,” Dean says softly, placing a hand against Sam’s shoulder blades to brace him a bit. “Just let it go, relax, you’re alright.” The words are instinctual, the soothing phrases he’s repeated through every stomach bug Sam’s ever had. The boy is irrationally afraid of vomiting, and every time it happens he works himself into an absolute panic.

When Sam finally stops choking up bile, Dean eases him away from the toilet so he can flush away the evidence. Sam leans against the dingy wall, breathing in shallow pants and holding the damp cloth Dean offered him to his face. 

“You gonna tell me what the fuck’s going on?” Dean asks him once he’s finished wiping down the toilet and the floor next to it. 

“M’sorry,” Sam whispers. 

“Sammy, stop it. You’re sick, it happens. Now tell me why you’re so freaked.”

“M’not sick,” he says softly. 

“The hell you’re not. Come on, let’s get you in bed. See if you can sleep this off, alright?”

“M’drunk,” Sam confesses, and Dean has to bite his lip to stop himself from laughing. Sammy doesn’t drink enough to be past buzzed. At least the Sam he knew before four years at Stanford sure as hell didn’t. He was too afraid of turning into good old John Winchester, with his weeklong binges and fists connecting far too often with one or the other of the boys. 

“Why are you drunk at three in the afternoon?” Dean asks instead. 

“Miss Jess,” he whimpers, pulling himself back over the toilet and coughing into the bowl before beginning to retch again.

“Shit, Sammy,” Dean says, and resumes his position beside his brother, rubbing his back and repeating those old phrases, reassuring him that he was right there, that he wasn’t alone, that he was safe and the he was going to be cared for. 

This time, when Sam finished, he leaned against Dean and his massive body was practically limp. “S’my fault,” he mumbled. “S’much as if I killed her myself. My fault mom died, my fault Jess died, s’all my fucking fault.”

“Aw Sam, it’s not your fault, not for either of them. How long you been dragging this around with you, man?” Dean asks. It’s been more than a year since Jessica died in the same flames that had killed their mother. They’ve travelled the country, hunted all manner of evil things, lost their father to a deal with a demon. Not once has Sam broken down like this. Dean realizes with absolute horror that Sam has begun to cry. Tears are sliding down his face, soaking into Dean’s shirt and all he can do is hold on tight as his enormous baby brother breaks down in drunken sobs in his arms.

Sam settles down to whimpers after a while, and Dean coaxes him to his feet, half dragging him into the main room and dropping him onto a bed. Sam grabs his hand and holds on tight. He looks up at him with big puppy dog eyes. “It’s alright, Sammy, I’m not going anywhere. Just gonna grab you a bucket in case your stomach acts up again and I’ll be right back.”

Sam nods and lets go, though he is still staring at him and looks about half a second from drunken breakdown number two. This one is going in the chick flick moments hall of fame for sure. Not that Dean would ever be able to actually ride Sam about it. The kid is absolutely wrecked, and at the moment, Dean would do just about anything to make him feel even a little bit better.

When he returns with a plastic trash can from the bathroom and a couple of washcloths in a water filled ice bucket, Sam is curled up in a ball and crying again. Dean puts the trash can on the floor and the ice bucket on the table before climbing onto the bed and dragging his brother into his lap. He holds him, remembering all the times he did this when Sam was a little kid, back before the kid learned to put up walls that are thick enough now apparently to keep even Dean from knowing what he’s actually feeling. 

“I’ve got you, Sammy,” Dean whispers, holding tight to the shaking kid in his arms. He sits with him, grabbing the trash bin when Sam whines that he’s going to hurl again. The rest of the afternoon and evening passes in much the same way, with Sam dozing in him arms between bouts of sickness. In those hours, his grown up baby brother morphs back into a crying kid, the little boy that Dean spent his own childhood and adolescence desperately trying to protect. 

As the sky darkens outside, Sam’s stomach finally stops rebelling, and he settles into a fitful sleep. Dean curls up around him, holding him the way he did when they were very young, when John raised a hand to him too quickly for Dean to step between them, when the food ran out and they went to bed with empty bellies and frightened dreams. Sam cries in his sleep, just as he had so many years ago. It’s no easier for Dean to hear now than it was back then. He brushes unruly hair away from Sam’s sweaty face, shakes him gently awake and assures him that nothing is going to hurt him tonight. Sam’s eyes are big and damp with tears and somehow, the grown man Dean brought back from Stanford is still a little boy underneath it all, clinging to his brother and begging him to make it better.

“We need to talk about this,” Dean says once Sam is calm again. It’s such an odd thing to come out of his mouth, seeing as he’s usually the king of bottling it up and burying it as far down as it’ll go. But seeing his Sammy hurting like this, there’s no way he’s letting the kid do this to himself. 

It’s awkward and stilted, two men who were raised to avoid emotions like the plague, to suck it up and forget every hurt, to take a punch and still revere the man who threw it. Sam’s been carrying around enough guilt to start his own religion, and he goes from quiet and teary to belligerent in unpredictable bursts. By the time they’re finished, though, Dean knows a lot more about the man his brother has become, and he’s deeply worried about that man.

No one can stay sane with that kind of pain living in them. Poor kid agonizes over every death he feels like he could have prevented, over every vision that came a few moments too late, every person who’s died from a connection to the yellow eyed demon who came for his mother that night in his nursery. Finally, Sam lets Dean pull him close again, buries his face in Dean’s shoulder and cries for what seems an eternity. It’s past midnight when he’s calmed down again, and Dean convinces him to down some water and a couple ibuprofen to stave off a hangover come morning. 

They change out of daytime clothing, into ratty sweats and bare chests that have been the sleeping uniform for them since childhood. They both bear scars across their bodies, visible in the dim lighting of the cheap motel room. Dean used to think he knew every one of his brother’s scars, knew their origins, had often been the one to sew up the gashes and bind the wounds. Now, he knows that there are definitely more than a few buried deeper than he can see. They go to their separate beds, and as Dean turns out the light, Sam’s voice carries through the room.

“Can you, I mean, fuck it, I don’t think I can be alone right now.”

Dean doesn’t speak. He doesn’t know a good response, a way to tell Sam he doesn’t have to be alone, that he isn’t going to let him hurt alone anymore. Instead, he slides into the bed beside him, guide’s Sam’s head to his shoulder, and rubs his back until he is asleep in his arms. Dean may have missed the signs that his baby brother was headed into a breakdown, but now that he knows, he’s damn well not going to let the kid suffer alone anymore.


End file.
